Scorched Earth Drabbles
by Fictatious
Summary: A series of drabbles in and after the war.
1. The Illusionist

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched Earth Drabbles  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Austria and Prussia  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** Oh no there be swearin's!  
**Summary:** Gilbert is dissatisfied with the management.

…

"I hate that man."

Roderich glanced up from his book to take in Gilbert's sour expression. The normally violently cheerful nation sat with arms crossed, glaring down at the street bellow, from which sounds of a healthy marketplace drifted. They'd taken advantage of the weather to lounge on the balcony that afternoon, though the cheerful sun did not seem to permeate the dark mood Gilbert had been in the past few years. Roderich sided and marked his page, then set his book aside and took a sip of his rapidly cooling tea.

"I assume you mean the Furhr?" he asked.

"He's a charlatan," Gilbert scoffed.

"Ludwig seems to like him well enough," Roderich replied with a small shrug.

"Ludwig is a _child_. He's too naive for his own good."

"He is very young," Roderich agreed, taking another sip of tea. "I forget sometimes; he's always so serious. If I didn't know otherwise I would assume he was the older brother."

Gilbert shot him a suspicious glare but let the comment go in favor of his current irritation. "He really _believes_ all the bullshit that that bastard is dishing out. He won't even listen to me!" He slumped more thoroughly in his seat with an angry "_humph!_"

"About what? This concept of breeding humans like dogs or the fairy-tale 'history' they've fabricated for the Reich?" Roderich studied the shape of a distant cloud, it vaguely resembled a phonograph.

"Why are you so _relaxed_ about it?" Gilbert demanded, turning his glare on his companion. "You _know_ that bastard is poison!"

"And we are the fools who follow the mad-man." Roderich shrugged and smiled softly at the sound of music drifting up from the street. "But it is just willfully ignorant to suggest that his Reich has done us no good. A few years ago, marks were worthless and the people were miserable."

"The economy would have righted itself in time," Gilbert grumbled, re-crossing his arms and setting his face into a well-practiced sulk.

"And what of the people's pride? It is difficult to recover from the total humiliation France inflicted on you. And a puppet-government in which the people have no faith does little to set their hearts at ease."

"As opposed to a government ruled by secrecy and _lies?_"

"Germany needs this war," Roderich said in a somewhat placating tone after finishing his tea. "Let him win the war for us and then we can cast him aside. Decapitating the Reich now would forfeit everything we've gained and leave us in a worse state than the last war."

"You don't really thing he's just going to curl up and be a good little psycho-bastard after the war, do you?" Gilbert cast a dark look Roderich that went unacknowledged.

"You're very ability to dissent proves that his power is not absolute. Once the war has been won, I have no doubt there are many who will rise up to set this affair right. A tyrant's reign is always short."

"... He took my knights," Gilbert said in a sulky grumble.

Roderich sighed, rolling his eyes, irritated, but not surprised, that Gilbert was beating that dead-horse again. "One of these days you're going to notice that the Crusades are over and the world no longer needs knights."

Gilbert glowered at him for a minute and then turned his glare down on the street. Silence stretched between them for several minutes before he spoke again. "I just wish that he didn't have Ludwig so wrapped around his finger."

"The man is an exceptional orator. He knows how to inspire people," Roderich replied in an almost dismissive way.

"He's _too_ good. He makes me nervous."

Roderich slid his book open to the page he'd marked. "I've never known you to worry so much. I really think you're making a bigger issue of this than it is. Human leaders come and go, how much damage could one man do?"

…

A/N: So this was the first drabble I originally wrote in this series and I've decided that even though it doesn't take place first on the timeline now, I still think it makes the best introduction to the series. The next chapter is going backwards in time to the early 30s, so don't be too weirded out by that shift.


	2. The Basilica Pt1

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Basilica Pt. 1  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Germany, Prussia, N. Italy  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** RELIGION! RUN!  
**Summary:** In Rome for the first time since the 16th century, Gilbert decides to visit Saint Peter's Basilica.

…

BIG OL' PRE-FIC NOTE: THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND SHIT WRITTEN IN HERE DO NOT REFLECT THE BELIEFS OF THE AUTHOR OR THE CONTEMPORARY BELIEFS OF ANYONE. THIS IS ME ATTEMPTING TO EXPLORE A CHARACTER AND A PARTICULAR TIME IN HISTORY. I AM SO TOTALLY NOT ATTACKING OR AGREEING WITH ANY OF THIS.

I'm placing this one in the early 1930s, so it's before "Revolutions," making it the earliest of the drabbles yet.

…

Filiciano was buzzing around excitedly, commenting how nice it was that Gilbert had come along to Rome this time and that they would have to have lunch together and had he met Romano before? and maybe they would get along well because they both seemed to like sarcasm. Gilbert attempted to ignore the demi-country as Ludwig patted his head and tried to calm him down. Gilbert's eyes slid over the scenery of the Eternal City, scrutinizing it in detail. Aspects of the architecture, the skyline, occasional monuments would stick out to him, stir a feeling of familiarity, or he would recognize them outright. It made him unsettled and anxious. Filiciano was babbling about sightseeing to him, and the most important historical monuments to see.

"I _know_," Gilbert snapped. "This _isn't_ my first time in Rome." He was practically _born_ here. He _was_ born here. Under that cross, under that black eagle, in the shadow of His Holiness and the city of God, this was what he'd been born to serve.

"Oh, right!" the spaz giggled. "Of course it's not! I forgot. It's just that Ludwig was so-"

"Yeah, well I cut those ties before he came along," Gilbert said a bit too quickly, waving his hand dismissively.

"Oh... I see..." the little Italian sounded slightly hurt and confused, but the latter was somewhat of a perpetual state for him anyway.

"Gil?" Ludwig asked behind him as Gilbert turned and started walking west. "Where are you going?"

"The Basilica," Gilbert replied in a successfully casual voice. "I'll catch ya later."

He had walked twelve steps before he heard Ludwig slowly respond, sounding just as confused as Filiciano, "Okay..."

...

The Basilica was much larger than its previous incarnation. Raphael's designs, Michelangelo's improvements, the paintings, the reliefs, the statues, the altarpieces, the paint and gold leaf _everywhere_... In the end, maybe it was worth it, Gilbert thought for a moment. This was a place that renewed the faithful heart with its awe-inspiring grandeur. But how many of the saints in the paintings had been made to resemble Medici benefactors? How many names and brands and tons of ill-gained wealth were buried in the glorious details? How much corruption did the colorful frescos cover? How many _indulgences_ had it cost to build the fantastic alter over Saint Peter's tomb?

He couldn't decide if the new Basilica was beautiful or disgusting.

But even under a different roof, on different tiles, surrounded by different walls and statuary, he was standing on the same spot where he'd found so much comfort in his younger days. The marker was different but the grave was the same. The Rock upon which the Church was built.

There were people wandering around, some praying, some looking at the artwork, some looking at him with suspicious eyes. A German uniform, and the implications and ludicrous ideals it now symbolized, couldn't help but stand out here. Gilbert ignored them and the evidences of the corruption and greed of a troubled past and walked toward the alter.

He stared at it for a long time, standing motionless and feeling blank, before finally he crossed himself and knelt. "I believe in God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth..."

He was on his second Ave Maria before he noticed what he was doing. He paused, staring at the steps, his mind buzzing with static for several minutes.

"... and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," he continued.

By the twelfth recitation of Ave Maria, he wished he had a rosary to count on.

After fifty-three Ave Marias and seven Lord's Prayers, Gilbert opened his eyes again and saw that they were blurred. He blinked and felt tears fall from them. He noticed that his breath was ragged and that he was shaking. He sat back on his heels and stared at the altar again. It should never have been built. It was an insult to the Lord and his Church. It was a _mistake_.

But it was beautiful.


	3. The Basilica Pt2

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Basilica Pt. 2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Prussia and a some dude  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** RELIGION! RUN!  
**Summary:** Gilbert is worried that the Devil might be subverting Germany.

BIG OL' PRE-FIC NOTE: THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND SHIT WRITTEN IN HERE DO NOT REFLECT THE BELIEFS OF THE AUTHOR OR THE CONTEMPORARY BELIEFS OF ANYONE. THIS IS ME ATTEMPTING TO EXPLORE A CHARACTER AND A PARTICULAR TIME IN HISTORY. I AM SO TOTALLY NOT ATTACKING OR AGREEING WITH ANY OF THIS.

…

Gilbert was sitting on the floor, gazing at the altar. He wasn't seeing the master-works of the High Renaissance or the intricate, snowflake-like architecture or the amazing detail put into every visible surface. He was looking through the pomp, to the heart of the Basilica, the heart of the Catholic Church and Christianity itself, the Rock, the apostle, the foundation over which the faith was built.

"You don't look like a sight-seer," the address came in slightly accented German, not the fluid Italian sounds he'd been listening to all day.

Gilbert considered the Franciscan for a while, then he looked back toward the alter. "Isn't creating a sight to see the purist form of vanity, Father?" he asked quietly. "Is it God who this house brings glory to or the artists who painted it like a whore, the aristocrats who paid their wages or the men who walk under this roof and capitalize on the splendor and greatness of the Holy Father?" his words poured out faster towards the end and left him feeling slightly winded.

He peaked up at the Franciscan again after a moment, feeling like a child who had just been caught swearing. The priest was studying him slowly, eyes rolling over his face, his uniform, his bent posture. "I think it would be a greater vanity to question the will of God in his own house."

"Forgive me Father... I don't know what the will of God is anymore... I used to think I did but everywhere I look now all I see hypocrisy," Gilbert looked back down at the floor again, irritated by the burning in his eyes.

"You are having a crisis of faith?"

He shook his head. "It's the world's crisis. No one fears God now, no one loves Him, no one remembers what we owe Him or what He gave us." Gilbert blinked fast and took a steadying breath before glancing up at the Franciscan feeling embarrassed and somehow helpless. "Father, would you hear my confession?"

The priest's face took on a softer expression and he nodded. "Of course, my child."

Gilbert took another breath and closed his eyes. "Father forgive me, for I have sinned."

"How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Four-hundred and twelve years."

There was a pause and Gilbert wondered if the face had lost its soft look. The Franciscan probably thought he was being an ass-hole now. "My son, confession will do you no good if you do not speak truthfully."

"_Father, I am Prussia,_" he said in a rush. "I was born of the Teutonic Order of knights serving His Holiness and protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land and spreading the word of God to the barbarians of the North. I served the Holy See for many, many years and this is the truth. I last confessed four-hundred and twelve years ago." Gilbert found himself trembling very slightly. He did not open his eyes. He did not look at the priest. If he refused to believe him, it was the Franciscan's fault, not his.

The Franciscan must have come to the same conclusion. After another pause, he said, "Go on, child."

"I lost my faith in the papacy when indulgences were _sold_ to wealthy sinners. I have never lost faith in the Almighty Father but I... I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore... If God speaks through men who can be corrupted, how can I know who really speaks for God? How can I know what He _wants_ from me?"

"The Lord wants only your faith and obedience, my child."

"But how can I be obedient when I don't know what He _wants?!_" Gilbert shouted and then bit his lip and tried to swallow the lump in his throat. "I'm sorry, Father," he said quietly. He swallowed again before trying to start over, this time more specific. "My country and my people are under the power of a man who reveres the pagan idols I dedicated myself to destroying. He raises laws and restrictions against the Jews and the Gypsies when he is no better than one himself. He has reduced the holy symbols of my legacy to mere _brands_, on a par with the runes of Viking barbarians."

Gilbert found himself trembling; he didn't open his eyes but just remained where he was crouched and tried to reign in his anger. "Hitler's policy and propaganda is an insult to the Lord. I _know_ this, but no matter what I say my brother and my people will not be convinced. They continue to follow that _heretic_ like ignorant children and they feed his power without _question_." Gilbert swallowed and opened his eyes, staring at the floor. "Father, I'm afraid that the hand of Satan is in this and that I can't have the power to _stop_ it."

"... Men are capable of evil without the aid of the Devil, my child," the priest said slowly. "There is a strong possibility that the Chancellor is of questionable character, but I think you are over-reacting to suspect him of being a minion of Satan."

"But then why can no one see how disgusting he is?" Gilbert pleaded, hearing desperation in his own voice as he looked up to the Franciscan. "How does an ugly little man like _him_ have such a hold on my people?"

The Franciscan looked back at him silently for what seemed like a long time before he responded. "And if the Chancellor were a servant of the Devil, what then? It seems to me as though you are looking for an excuse to fail."

Gilbert felt a fresh surge of anger at the accusation, accompanied by a deep embarrassment that made his face grow warm under the priest's gaze. "No, of course not, Father!" he protested, shaking his head. "I'd rather die!"

"Then it shouldn't matter if he serves the Devil or himself," the Franciscan said, his face again taking on the soft, kind look from earlier. "Because neither man nor demon must be allowed to stand against God."

Gilbert stared up at him, feeling his anger turning inward and becoming absolutely furious with himself. When had he become so weak, so _timid?_ When had he laid down his sword and let godless men intimidate him? When had he become a coward? Searching his memory, the last time he could remember himself feeling truly strong and righteous and _connected_... was when he had fought for this Holy See.

He found himself blinking very fast and turned his face back towards the floor. "Th-thank you, Father," he whispered and felt a hand gently fall on his shoulder. A few moments later, something very like a sob fell past his lips.

…

AN: No seriously, this isn't much of a stretch, people then AND NOW have always gotten all freaked out about Nostradamus' anti-Christ predictions and stuff (there are to be 3, the people who follow and interpret this stuff have generally agreed on Napoleon as the first and Hitler as the second, the last one should be comin' 'round sometime soon to usher in 2012 and such...) And Gilbert is a Crusader, when he's not being cracky or whatever, I'm sure he worries about Christian dogma a fair bit.


	4. Revolutions

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Revolutions  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Spain,  
**Rating:** 15 because Romano has a dirty mouth.  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** 1936; Romano goes to Spain's house to complain about the politics back home and finds that Spain might have it even worse.

…

"I am _so_ PISSED-OFF!" Romano shouted, waving his arms in frustration and pushing past Antonio into the house, without so much as a greeting, the minute the Spaniard opened the door. He stomped in the direction of the living room without a look back, continuing to rant and flail. "One more power-hungry ass-hole who thinks it's their damn _mission_ to 'return the seat of the world's power to Rome' or some shit and doesn't care what _anybody else_ thinks and he's just going to go ahead and _do_ whatever the _hell_ he wants because oh, _he_ knows what's _best!_ I fucking can't _believe_ this guy! And Feliciano, oh _Feliciano_ is too busy _fawning_ over some potato-eating trailer-trash to even _notice_ that we're as good as _fucked!_ What the _fuck_ is wrong with everybody?!"

He turned to look back at Antonio, who was still standing right where he had been when Romano stormed into his house. The door was still open, his hand loosely rested on the handle and he was just standing there, staring out into nothing. "... Lovi," he said just as Romano was starting to wonder if he'd fallen asleep or something, "... I need you to go home..."

Romano gaped, his mouth opening and closing without sound for a moment as he tried to process the shock of such an unusual request. "What the _shit_, ass-hole!" he yelled when he finally got over the surprise enough to be enraged by such an offence. "I'm not _welcome_ in your house anymore?!"

"Not... Anytime but now, Lovi," Antonio replied quietly, not looking at him.

Romano snarled and stomped back towards him. "You _dick!_ What the _hell_ is wrong with now?!" He grabbed Antonio's arm and pulled him around so he could yell in his face. "Do you have someone _here?!_ Is that it?! Oh, I wouldn't want to spoil your..." he froze, his anger retreating faster than it had come and being replaced by a creeping dread as he saw Antonio's face.

He was pale. Very pale. His eyes were blood-shot and had dark rings under them. There was hair sticking to his forehead with sweat that the weather wasn't hot enough to account for. In the sudden quiet, Romano could hear that something was off in Antonio's breathing. "Please," he whispered. "Go home."

"What's wrong with you?" Romano asked, ignoring the request and pressing a hand to Antonio's face to feel the feverish heat radiating from his skin.

"Please, I need you to go," Antonio begged, trying to push Romano out the door.

"No! Tell me what's wrong!" Romano demanded, grabbing onto Antonio's arms and giving his most stubborn glare.

Before he could answer, or tell Romano to leave again, Antonio jerked strangely and made a sound like he was trying to stifle a particularly violent hiccup. And then Romano could hear it; gunfire in the distance, shouts, screams, people in chaos. He stared, suddenly chilled, as blood started leaking from the corner of Antonio's mouth and he shook with the effort to stay standing.

"Antoni--" Romano started before he suddenly found himself being hauled back inside and the door slammed shut behind them. Antonio was running, pulling him through the house.

He dragged him to the cellar door and turned to him as he opened it. "It'll be quieter in the morning, Lovi. Then you can go home. Please don't argue." And with that he shoved Romano into the wine cellar.

…

H/N: This be Spanish civil war/revolution times.


	5. Brutality

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Brutality  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** China, Japan  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** violence, insanity and drugs  
**Summary:** 1937. China can barely even recognize Japan as the person he used to know when the brutal invasion comes to a head.

…

1937

Yao had been thrown on the floor and kicked for refusing to "make himself presentable." Eventually he gave in and changed clothes. He forewent his military uniform or the formal Western clothes in his wardrobe and instead donned a red _changshan_. The soldiers laughed, and exchanged jokes in their native tongue, calling it a women's' dress and other such uncreative insults. Yao ignored them, brushing his hair and tying it neatly back. He thought briefly that he might like to style it into a _queue_ for the occasion, but he doubted the soldiers would let him linger long enough, much less have a razor.

He turned back to the soldiers, wondering if they would find it more irritating if he addressed them in Cantonese or in Japanese. They might be offended that a stupid Chinese would _dare_ to speak their _exalted_ language with perfect fluency. He instead said nothing at all and just glared at them, his hands fisting at his sides. They noticed he was "presentable" and ordered him out. When Yao stood still and glared defiantly, one raised the butt of his rifle.

"I should be much less presentable if you were to hit me with that," Yao said quietly, in crisp, formal Japanese with a perfect court accent.

Both soldiers looked slightly startled. They exchanged glances with each other and then the one who had raised the rifle slung it back over his shoulder by the strap and instead grabbed Yao by the arm and dragged him. He recaptured his balance and walked straight and tall, keeping his chin high as they lead him through the hallways. The other soldiers they passed laughed and pointed at him. He ignored them and kept his eyes pointed straight ahead of him.

They finally arrived at one of the small audience halls and pulled him through the door, announcing their presence to "Honda-sama." The boy -- he still looked so _very_ young -- turned, he gave the soldiers a nod and dismissed them. They both bowed deeply, as low as they could without dropping to their knees, and left, shutting the door behind them.

"... Kiku..." Yao said in a quiet voice as the younger nation approached him.

"You will call me Honda-sama now," he snapped, then an odd grin overtook his usually placid features. "Or the Mighty Japanese Empire if you so prefer. I am, after all, the hands of his majesty the Emperor. His will is mine and you do not argue with the will of a _god!_"

Yao barely saw Kiku's fist coming before pain was blooming in his cheek and jaw. He lost his balance in the shock of how _sudden_ the attack had been and fell to the floor. He caught himself with his hands and managed to land in more or less of a sitting position. He stared back up at Kiku, and could barely recognize him.

"What the hell are you--" he started but was interrupted when the other nation viciously kicked him. Yao yelped in pain and covered his face, feeling blood inside his mouth and trickling down from his hairline.

"Don't you think it's rude," Kiku was saying in a totally unfamiliar voice, "that I haven't asked you any questions and yet you still keep _talking?_ Talk talk talk talk _talk!_ Is that all you Chinese can do? What good are your philosophers doing you now when you're a worthless _dog_ to the English and they can't even be bothered to stop you from being invaded? Worthless! You really are a pathetic, feeble, old man! Why here I am, saving you from British enslavement because the great _Middle Kingdom_ has fallen so far you've practically erased _yourselves!_"

The words hurt because they were the truth, after a fashion, but it was the strange, almost hysterical, voice and how _fast_ Kiku was talking that caught Yao's attention the most. The voice, the attitude was not the Kiku Yao had always known. He couldn't possibly have changed so completely in such a short span of time, could he?

Kiku suddenly let out a loud, hysterical laugh, like a madman, and then descended on Yao, crouching over him and pinning his shoulders to the ground. "To think I once looked up to _this!_" he said and laughed again as Yao stared up at him. He was flushed, there was sweat visible on his face, and his pupils were dilated. He looked like a wild animal. He looked _drugged_.

Yao's mouth dropped open as his previous anger was slowly eaten away by utter horror. "DiDi, what have they--"

"Shut up!" Kiku punched him again and then made that bizarre, hysterical laugh once more before dropping down and suddenly locking his mouth onto Yao's. Yao was too shocked to do anything for several seconds. When his wits slammed forcefully back into him, he pushed his hands against Kiku's chest, shoving him back. Kiku came up laughing loudly again. Yao stared at him, giggling and licking Yao's blood from his lips. "Your blood... It's strange..." he said through his giggles.

"... What have they done to you?" Yao whispered. Kiku's face was all distorted with sick mirth and he was panting, seeming to have trouble catching his breath.

"Me? Why they've made me stronger! The opposite of _you!_" his tone was accusing, almost angry for a moment before it shifted back into madness. "The Japanese army is the strongest in the world! They are my samurai reborn! Every one with the strength of Musashi and we will take this world for ours because _no one_ can oppose us!" he flung his hands in the air with excitement and practically sang the words, his eyes flashing, gazing at some far off point before snapping back down to Yao's face. "Starting with _you!_" he declared, swooping back down on him and grabbing a fist-full of hair and giving it a painful twist before pressing another kiss to Yao's unwilling lips.

"Stop it!" Yao screamed, trying to push him away. He was truly terrified now because this was _not_ his DiDi.

…

A/N: There's evidence to suggest that the Japanese soldiers were on amphetamines during the Rape of Nanking and other times during the war and that (along with propaganda, mob-mentality and dehumanizing the 'enemy') accounted for some of their bat-shit crazy behavior. Because seriously, they got _really_ bat-shit. Why were they on amphetamines, you ask? Because WWII was all about the super-soldier science projects. This was one of them.  
I imagine a Mifune Toshiro laugh for Kiku in here...


	6. Den Disperata

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Den Disperata  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Denmark  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** History  
**Summary:** To save his people, Denmark sends them away.

…

Every motor in the harbor was running, boats and ships of every size waiting to pull away and disappear into the night, their running-lights dark, becoming shadows on the waves. And not just this harbor, every shipyard in Denmark was awake tonight and yet utterly dark, as people hurried along the docks and crowded into vessels. Matthias could hear the quickened heartbeats around him as clearly as the sounds of hundreds of shoes hurrying along the wooden docks.

His heart was pounding along with his people's and his breath was coming in short, nervous puffs as he ran back and forth on the docks, finding room in the assembled vessels for all the precious cargo they had to carry away into the darkness. Away from him. It was like the ships were taking away his right arm that night, and leaving him bleeding there on the docks, but it had to be done. He couldn't protect them now.

"Sarah!" he heard a woman exclaim and turned toward the sound. In the moonlight he saw the child sprawled on the planks just before she overcame the initial shock of falling and started to cry. Two adults, her parents, were hurriedly picking her up and her mother was whispering. "Shh, baby girl, don't cry! I need you to be brave tonight!"

"Have you found a boat?" Matthias asked, moving across the dock toward the family.

"No, they've all been full down that way," the man answered and bent to pick up the little girl.

"This one has room," Matthias said, pointing to the tug behind him.

"Thank you." The man's grateful smile was just visible in the darkness.

The family started to move toward the tug but the woman paused, looking at Matthias carefully. "It's you, isn't it?" she asked softly.

Matthias looked back at her for a few moments and then nodded. "You need to hurry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry this is all I can do for you."

"Don't say that." The woman shook her head gently and took a step closer to him. "When this war is over and you are free again, I promise you that my family will return. Even if I do not live to see it, my daughter or her children will come back to you. You will forever have our hearts." She lifted up on her toes and pressed a gentle kiss to Matthias' cheek. "I promise you."

"Thank you," Matthias whispered, feeling a lump rise in his throat. "God protect you."

And they and all the other families were tucked into every sea-worthy vessel and spirited away. With the grace of God they would find safe harbor somewhere else and by the grace of God not one of his people would ever wear that accursed star.

…

A/N:

**KandyHouse**:

I put a note at the top of the last three posts I've made that I'm no longer posting the drabbles in chronological order, I'm posting them as the ideas come to me. Revolutions fit before all the other drabbles thus far ('36) and Air Mail goes along with The Solution. I put them up at the end of the ones I've already written here on FFnet, just like I'm doing with this chapter, because otherwise you would come in looking for the new chapter and you'd end up back at The Bunker because it's the latest one chronologically. I let the other three hang out at the end for a week, but today I've moved them up to where they belong in the chronology, and I'm going to keep doing that with new chapters (leaving them at the end for a week) regardless of when they're taking place.

**Arkhadiam**: said "it´s this point in which all authors seems to agreed: that Gilbert was the one to go against the fuhrer in first place."

The thing with Gilbert there is that *his* country is gone at this point and he's just kind of hanging in there on a memory, and also, his original people weren't Prussia itself. Himayura established in the story of young-Hungary and young-Prussia that the character of Prussia originally represented the Teutonic Knights (who were sent by the Pope to go Christianize the Prussia region and thus became Prussia). The Knights had diminished and become a small charity by the time WWII rolled around, but they were still there right up until Germany annexed Austria, which was where the Knights had been headquartered after the Napoleonic wars. Hitler dissolved all the clubs and social organizations that were not directly controlled/influenced by the Nazi party (seriously, the Boy Scouts got banned) and when Austria was annexed all the organizations there got dissolved too, including the Teutonic Knights. Now, with his country a thing of the past, I figure that Gilbert's existence became a lot more dependant on what remained of the Teutonic Knights, so when Hitler forcibly disbands them, that's gotta hit Gilbert pretty hard, so he's going to be having troubles a while before Ludwig really starts feeling them. I think I'm going to write a drabble for the disbanding of the Knights, but I haven't really gotten a bunny for it yet.

Uh… I think that was all the questions so far… Okay. It's kinda harder to keep up with them here than on Livejournal because there isn't the back and forth comment system that everybody can see so it ends up taking me longer to answer things…


	7. The Solution Pt1

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Germany, Prussia  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history, sick.  
**Summary:** Ludwig wakes up to realize that he's totally fzked.

…

Ludwig woke up with his face and neck drenched in blood and vomit. He panted and cringed and the repulsive smell and sticky mess clinging to his skin and hair. When he moved to sit up he suddenly noticed how much pain he was in. There was a stabbing, burning hurt in his gut, like an inflamed appendix, his head was throbbing with every heartbeat and his limbs ached as though bruised deep in the muscle. Ludwig crumpled forward with a strangled whine and sat there, curled and shaking for several minutes before he tried to crawl out of his bed and ended up tumbling to the floor.

It was too hot. He was shivering and sweating at the same time, as tears ran down his face. He made a pathetic little sound and tried to get up, to go to the door, go out and find out what had happened, but he couldn't seem to pick himself up off the floor. The desperate need to know what was _wrong_ overpowered his pride and he crawled slowly over to the bedroom door. The sitting-room of his suite was dark and motionless, everything perfectly in its place as though nothing were the matter, but Ludwig knew that something was wrong, something was _very_ wrong and it felt like that something was killing him.

He managed to pull himself up to something like a standing position by hanging on to the back of a chair and stayed there panting and whimpering for a minute before attempting to make the final stretch to his door and the hallway beyond. He staggered awkwardly and collapsed against the oak door as he caught the handle. It opened and spilled him out into the hall, where he lay in a heap and let out a few pitiful little sobs. He was past caring who saw him like this and was just desperately wishing that someone would find him, help him, tell him what was happening.

"W-Wes... West..." a hoarse voice called.

Ludwig lifted his head up to see his brother leaning heavily against the opposite wall, barely keeping himself upright and maybe it was the dim lighting, but he looked much paler than usual. "G-Gil, w-what's happening?" he whimpered, dismayed and relieved at the same time. Gilbert was feeling it too; it must be widespread. But he'd seen centuries of war, he'd know what this meant, he'd be able to tell Ludwig what had gone wrong.

"I--" Gilbert made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a congested sniff, and let his legs buckle under him. "I don't know..." He sank the rest of the way to the floor and looked away down the corridor and Ludwig could see the shine of tears on his cheeks in the dim hall lights. Gilbert tried to catch his breath, which sounded almost like sobs, and then yelled in a desperate, almost hysterical voice. "_Help! Somebody HELP!_"

…

A/N: This would be June '41, if that wasn't clear enough. Himmler's Final Solution is put into practice.


	8. The Solution, Pt2

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Solution Pt. 2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Germany, Prussia, Austria  
**Rating:** R, for swearing and creepy  
**Warnings:** violence, history, sick, sociopathy, and swearing  
**Summary:** Ludwig is disillusioned and Gilbert is really really pissed.

…

He was clean. He was wearing a crisp, freshly pressed uniform. His hair was neatly combed and every button was in place. Ludwig could be confident that this uniform wouldn't be messed like his night-clothing because his stomach had used up all the ammunition it had and was now quite empty. Whatever hunger-pangs it might have been sending were well over-shadowed by the excruciating pain in the rest of his body. The taste of bile was gone and he was left only with the strong, metallic taste of blood.

Gilbert was on his left, with anger and fear showing in his blood-shot eyes and a slight trembling in his arms when he moved. But he was definitely keeping his movements to a minimum. Roderick was on his right, somewhat slumped in his chair and allowing his hair to shade his sallow, waxen face. For two days no one had told them anything. The serving staff and nurses that had been their main company didn't know anything, they were scared and upset and Gilbert had made several of them cry with his furious demands and accusations.

Finally, after two and a half days of agony, both from the pain and from _not knowing_ the cause, the Furhr was meeting them. Of course the Furhr was a very busy man, and often away from the capitol, but Ludwig still didn't understand why, when something so clearly _wrong_ had to be happening, he hadn't even sent a representative to meet them sooner. And why _nobody_ seemed to know what was happening.

It had to be some new, Soviet weapon, and the government was keeping it a secret from the citizens to prevent mass-hysteria. That had to be it.

Finally the door opened, and the Furhr and his guard came in. Ludwig stood and saluted, despite the pain, but Gilbert only cast a suspicious glare towards the man and Roderick didn't seem to even notice his entrance. The Furhr generously ignored their insubordination. He gave Ludwig a nod and sat down behind his desk as Ludwig all but collapsed back into his own chair.

"My apologies, gentlemen, f-"

"_What did you do?_" Gilbert demanded, cutting-off the Furhr of the entire German empire.

The Furhr looked annoyed only for a moment before his expression shifted to indulgent. "I'm sorry that you are in pain, Herr Beilschmidt. It seems the infection goes as deep as I had feared."

"_Fuck you! What did you do?_" Gilbert jerked as though he would have jumped out of his chair if his body were cooperating.

Roerich's head snapped up, his eyes finally falling on the Furhr and his voice was held an unusual sharpness when he spoke. "What infection?"

"The Jewish infection, of course."

There was a moment of confused silence for a moment before Gilbert whispered, "You son of a bitch, _WHAT DID YOU DO?_" and this time he really did launch out of his chair, slamming his hands down heavily on the Furhr's desk. The Furhr's guards took a step forward and leveled their guns on Gilbert, and the Furhr recoiled slightly, his eyes widening at Gilbert's outburst.

The Furhr seemed to calm himself and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He spoke in a careful way, as though addressing a child. "I suppose it is to be expected that you three would experience discomfort. Most symptoms of a disease are caused by the body's defenses fighting it. The more virulent the disease, the worse the symptoms. What you are experiencing now is no doubt like the pox or typhoid would be to normal humans, but I assure you gentlemen that you will be stronger once when your blood is pure."

Ludwig's mouth dropped open slightly; his mind seemed blank and filled with confusion at the same time. None of what the Furhr was saying made sense. He couldn't understand it. He had to be misunderstanding. He could see that Gilbert and Roderick had both gone ashen, staring at the Furhr with a look of shocked disbelief.

"... You're insane..." Gilbert whispered, continuing for several moments to just stare, looking utterly shocked. "... You're fucking insane..." And then his hand reached for his side-arm. He always wore it on the left hip, accustomed from centuries of fighting to crossing himself to reach for a sword. By the time he'd pointed his luger, the guards had already hit him three times and the Furhr was diving behind his desk. "YOU MOTHER-FUCKER!" he screamed and shot at the retreating form as two more bullets hit him squarely and one of the guards leapt towards him, realizing how ineffective shooting was. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

More guards came spilling into the room at the sound of gunshots. Gilbert was tackled to the floor. Somebody put a gun directly to his head, only to find it just as useless in putting down the national persona as the previous bullets had been. Everyone was shouting and Ludwig could only stare as soldiers grabbed him and restrained him with hand-cuffs.

"STOP IT!" Roderick was shouting at them. "_Even if you COULD kill him, it would mean the death of every man, woman and child who ever called themselves Prussian!_"

"Get them out of here!" one of the soldiers shouted. Four more struggled to drag Gilbert back towards the door as he thrashed and cursed. Two pulled Ludwig between them, supporting him as he walked rather than dragging him like his brother; he was too stunned and confused to fight them.

Ludwig looked up to where Roderick was being lead along beside him, still wearing such a completely foreign look of horrified disbelief that he was hardly recognizable. "He-" Ludwig tried to form some coherent sentence, because he knew that he had to have misunderstood. He needed Roderick to tell him that he had heard wrong. "He's killing my people?" his voice came out in a desperate, whining tone.

Roderick lifted his head a little, looking back at Ludwig for a moment before closing his eyes and turning his face towards the floor. His long hair swung down to obscure a pained, guilty expression.

…

A/N: I think this is the first time I've written something myself that really literally turned my stomach. I am really damn glad to have this scene put to bed and out of my head now.


	9. Air Mail Pt1

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Air Mail Pt. 1&2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Hungary, GilBird  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** Elizaveta recieves a desturbing note.

…

Tap tap. Taptaptap. Tap. Taptaptaptaptaptaptap.

Elizaveta yawned and stretched her arms up over her head before letting them drop back to the bed with a sigh. After a few moments of staring sleepily up at the ceiling, she pushed herself up on her elbows and looked for the tapping sound. She spotted one of Gilbert's black eagles sitting outside the window and casting her an irritable look before pecking at the glass again.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," she said, rolling out of bed with a small grin. Honestly, she really didn't understand why Gilbert was still so enamoured of avian communication. A phone call took seconds and a message by eagle took two or three days, but no, he could never just be practical; the birds were more ostentatious after all. "All right, what have you got for me?" she asked, opening the window and putting out a hand to see if this was one of the ones that would let her pet it. It obliged, clicking its beak in a way that Elizaveta thought of as bird-purring.

"Aren't you a pretty girl," she giggled at the large bird, stroking its head a few times before fussing with the latch of the little case strapped to its leg. She tugged a rolled piece of paper out of it and ran a finger under the eagle's chin before flattening the note and studying the even-messier-than-usual message scrawled across it.

_Situation not awesome.  
Something hurts bad._

Elizaveta frowned at the note. The telegram-like clipped sentences were normal for Gilbert, but usually the message was some inane joke that only he understood, often cryptic but not usually this... she wasn't sure what this was.

She sighed and went back over to her bed, sitting down on the edge of it and picking up her phone. She rang out and waited for the long-distance call to connect. "Gilbert Beilshmidt, please," she said in a cheerful voice when the operator picked up.

"One moment please."

After a few seconds the phone started ringing. And as it _kept_ ringing, Elizaveta tried to quash a feeling of unease rising within her. Gilbert had just wandered off, that was all. He could never sit still and he frequently didn't answer his phone. Just as she was about to hang up the receiver, there was a click at the other end of the line and an unfamiliar voice came on.

"Who is this?" the voice demanded rudely.

Elizaveta blinked in surprise, taking a moment to resettle herself and respond. "This is Elizaveta Hedervary. I was calling for Gilbert Beilshmidt. Perhaps the operator connected me to the wrong line..."

"You have the right line," the voice responded impatiently. "Herr Beilshmidt is indisposed at this time and can not take calls. If you will tell me a message, I will see that he gets it."

"Ah, well, there's not really a message..." she frowned. Gilbert was never 'indisposed.' He wasn't given any important jobs because he had a distinct habit embarrassing the Party. "I think perhaps I will just call Heir Edelstein instead..."

"He is indisposed as well."

Elizaveta's stomach sank and she bit her lip for a moment before trying again. "Perhaps Ludwig, then."

"He is _quite busy_. Is there a _message_, Fraeulein Hedervary?"

She was silent for several moments, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. "... Just that one of them call me back when the time is more convenient," she said at last.

"I will pass that along. Heil Hitler!"

There was a click as the line went dead. Elizaveta set down the phone and stared at it for several minutes before getting up and walking back over to where Gilbert's eagle was preening itself on the windowsill. She flattened out the strange note against the sill and picked up a pen to write on the back of it. The eagle snapped its beak at the end of the pen a few times as it moved.

_What's happened?  
Where are you?_

She rolled the paper back into a cylinder and tucked it into the bird's carrying pouch.


	10. Air Mail Pt2

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Air Mail Pt. 1&2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Hungary, GilBird  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** Elizaveta recieves a desturbing note.

…

Elizaveta tossed her coat on the bed and had stared to take down her hair when she heard the tapping. She ran to the window and pulled it quickly open but was startled to find not one, but four eagles sitting on the sill, glaring up at her. Something about that made her blood run cold. Surely Gilbert hadn't written her an essay, why would he need to send so many?

One of the birds invited itself into her room and flapped over to perch on the back of her chair. Elizaveta watched it move and then the other birds seemed to follow suit, apparently having gotten tired of her windowsill. She looked at them for a moment and then slid the window shut and walked over to them. The first pouch she checked was empty. No message at all contained within the cylindrical case. Her stomach sank lower and she was pecked by the next bird when she was a bit too rough opening its pouch. It was also empty.

The third had a note in it. Elizaveta felt a surge of relief as she unrolled it and spotted both Gilbert and Roderich's handwriting. Until the meaning of the words sank in.

In Gilbert's messy hand:

_You're beautiful. Survive._

And in Roderich's much neater cursive:

_I love you._

Elizaveta found that her hands were shaking. She tossed the note down and chased down the last eagle as it tried to avoid her, hopping across the table. Its pouch was empty like the first two. Only one bird had been needed to carry the note. Why were the other three here? This had to be some kind of twisted joke. Gilbert no doubt thought it was hilarious.

She ran over to her bedside and grabbed the phone, dialing out and waiting impatiently for the operator to answer. Her heart was racing as she fidgeted with the cord.

"Operator."

"Gilbert Beilshmidt," Elizaveta ordered into the receiver, louder than necessary.

"One moment please..." there was a pause and then the operator's voice came back on, sounding bewildered. "I... don't seem to have a connection for Herr Beilshmidt..."

"What do you mean? I called last week! He _has_ a line," Elizaveta nearly shouted.

"I... I'm not sure... It seems that it may have been disconnected. I don't have a listing for him..."

"What about Roderich Edelstein?" Elizaveta could feel hysteria starting to swell in her chest like a balloon.

"... I don't seem to have a listing for him either..." the operator's voice was confused and apologetic.

"Ludwig then! Ludwig Beilshmidt!"

"It... It's..."

"You _know_ who they are, _don't you?!_" Elizaveta demanded in a sharp, angry tone.

"Yes _of course_ I do! But... it's just... I don't have a listing..."

Elizaveta slammed the phone into the receiver and sat down heavily on the edge of her bed. She hugged her arms around herself and whimpered. Then she started to cry outright. Soon she was sobbing hysterically and rocking herself. There was a flapping of large wings near her head and then talons closed around her unprotected shoulder, poking painfully into her skin. A beak started to pick at her hair affectionately.

Elizaveta shuddered and sobbed, glancing over to the table with the other three birds hopping on and around it. She knew why they were here. Gilbert wanted her to take care of them. What she didn't know, what terrified her, was why Gilbert couldn't look after his precious babies himself.


	11. Unwilling Participant Pt1

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Unwilling Participant Pt 1  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** North Italy, South Italy  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** July 25, 1943, and the Allies take Italy.

…

Gunfire was the main sound now. Not bombs. Because the Allies were that close. There were still mortars and big, nasty guns going off, but there wasn't an aerial assault anymore. The opposing armies were too close together for that now. The gunfire was accompanied by the closer sounds of panicked shouting and boots running up and down the hall outside a small, second-story office. Inside the office, Lovino was sitting on the floor with a sturdy, oak desk at his back, to block stray bullets and shrapnel that may have come through the windows. Feliciano was curled up against him, half in his lap, shaking and whimpering. Lovino petted his hair in a rhythmic, cathartic pattern and watched the door in front of him.

When it opened for the third time in the last ten minutes, the prime minister was standing in the frame, glaring at him. "Get the hell up! We're leaving!" he shouted, glaring at Lovino.

"You can go ahead." Lovino gave him a disinterested shrug.

"Shut your damn mouth and get up!" The prime minister lifted his arm, already having had his pistol in hand before he came in the room, but as he pointed it at Lovino, he found that Lovino had a similar weapon leveled on him.

"Y'know, this sounds like fun. How about you shoot me in the head, and then I'll shoot you in the head, and we'll see if that works better, because you know that gun isn't going to do a damn thing to me," Lovino deadpanned.

"Lovino..." Feliciano whimpered, peaking up at the angry fascist dictator in the doorway.

"Hush now, little brother, the grown-ups are talking," Lovino said, not breaking eye-contact with the prime minister.

A minute passed with the two just staring at each other, neither making any move, and then the prime minister let out an angry growl and turned. "Fuck you then, you ungrateful little cock-suckers!" he shouted, leaving the doorway and fleeing.

"I think you've already done that pretty damn thoroughly, ugly pig-fucker!" Lovino shouted after him. He set his pistol back on the floor next to his right leg and wrapped his other arm around Feliciano.

"... I'm scared," Feliciano whispered into his shoulder.

"You don't need to be," Lovino answered in a quiet, soothing voice. "They're coming to free us."


	12. Unwilling Participant Pt2

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Unwilling Participant, Pt2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** North Italy, South Italy, UK, US  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** July 25, 1943, and the Allies take Italy, part deux.

…

For a time the running and shouting in the hallways had abated. Now it was back, but this time it was in English. Lovino wrinkled his nose at the obnoxious sound. Such an ugly language. No art to it; no rhythm. It was spat out like half-chewed cud. Of course, that wasn't the only resemblance Americans held to livestock.

The door opened suddenly, a soldier with a riffle pointing it into the room and spotting them where they were leaned against the desk. "Please identify yourselves!" he half-shouted.

"Stupid, _fucking_ American, who do you think I am!" Lovino spat back at him, mimicking the harsh, ugly sounds of the hickish creole.

"Sir! Please stay calm! Put your hands where I can see them! Both of you! Tell me your names and rank!" He kept his automatic rifle pointed steadily at Lovino.

"Go ahead and shoot, moron! What do you think you will accomplish with that! I am _Italy!_ Where is your country? I will speak to him!"

"Lovino, please don't..." Feliciano begged. He really didn't want to get shot, even if it wouldn't kill him.

The soldier looked confused for a moment before comprehension dawned on his face and he nodded towards Lovino's pistol, still sitting next to him on the floor. "Please push your weapon over here. Is he armed?" He looked at Feliciano.

"No," Lovino said, pushing his gun across the floor. "I'm not supposed to be either."

"Okay," the soldier said, crouching to pick up the pistol while keeping his own firearm accessible. "Please wait here. Stay in this room. I'll go find Al."

"Fine! Why are you still here!"

The door closed behind the soldier and he could be heard talking to others outside before boots ran away down the hall again. "Psh. _'Al.'_ They talk about him so casually. It's unprofessional."

"I think it's kind of nice..." Feliciano said quietly, loosening his grip on Lovino for the first time in hours. The soldier had been... not nice exactly, but polite, like they weren't quite _enemies_...

"It's careless," Lovino sniffed. "Acting so buddy-buddy with everyone, nobody will take him seriously."

Feliciano said nothing, and laid his head on his brother's shoulder, watching the door too now, and waiting. After several minutes, there was a distinctive tempo of several pairs of boots moving up the hallway with purpose and destination. They stopped and the door opened again.

"Well there ya are!" Alfred Jones declared with a idiotic grin as he strode through the door. "El Presidente didn't take you with him?"

"Prime minister, twit," Arthur Kirkland said with a roll of his eyes, following the younger persona into the room.

Lovino snorted. He decided that he didn't need to correct the American's stupidity, since the Brit already had. "He _tried_," he said instead.

"Well, it would have been a short trip anyway," Alfred said in a stupid voice, dropping down to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of them. "We got him arrested a couple miles down the road!"

"Good!" Lovino replied with a dismissive wave. "Hang him!"

"We generally like to have trials first." Alfred raised an eyebrow, still grinning like a moron.

"Right, in case he _didn't_ ruin my country! Or, oh! Maybe it was an _accident!_" Lovino flailed with angry indignation.

"You're Romano, right? You guys really look the same..."

"Oh would you _please_ shut up!" Arthur said with an exaggerated sigh, looking embarrassed to be seen with his former colony.

"Mister Jones?" Feliciano said in a timid voice as he finally stopped leaning on Lovino and sat forward, hugging his knees. "There's, there's something, um..."

"What's wrong, kid?" Alfred asked obnoxiously, refocusing on the (for the moment) much quieter Italian.

Behind him, Arthur scoffed. "You're the only _'kid'_ in this room."

"It's, um..." Feliciano looked at the floor. "I, the minister got angry when I said anything, and nobody's listening to me, but, um..."

"What's wrong? El Presidente's not calling the shots anymore, so go crazy," Alfred urged him with a stupid smile.

"It's... Ludwig's not Ludwig..." he said, looking embarrassed.

Lovino let his head thump back against the desk and relieved a very irritated sigh. Alfred looked nonplussed and Arthur knelt down next to him, frowning slightly as he considered Feliciano.

"Uh, come again?" Alfred asked stupidly.

"He-he- The Ludwig in the news films doesn't move right! He looks like Ludwig, in photographs it's almost impossible to tell, but in the film reels he doesn't move like Ludwig! The way he walks is wrong and the way he moves his head is wrong!" Feliciano insisted in the same whiney way he'd been telling Lovino for months.

"Huh..." Alfred said, tapping his knee like an idiot and exchanging a glance with Arthur.

"... Our intelligence has indicated that Hitler makes use of body-doubles," Arthur said slowly. "If he was using one for Ludwig as well... That might explain why he still looks so damned _healthy_ no matter how many bombs we drop on his head..."

"He wants the people to see a strong country," Alfred said, nodding stupidly. "You can only do so much with make-up..."

"You're telling me that fucker is parading around a fake _Germany_ in front of the news cameras?" Lovino asked. He was still very skeptical that this was likely one of Feliciano's flights of fancy; the other two were taking it seriously, but they didn't _know_ Feliciano like he did.

"Yeah, that'd be almost as crazy as El Presidente holding his own country hostage, wouldn't it!" Alfred said in not an entirely stupid way.

…

A/N: I had so much fun writing this part...


	13. The Bunker Pt1

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Bunker  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Germany, Prussia, Austria, France, Ukraine, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark Norway, Czech  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** Reunions are held durring an involuntary stay in a bunker. Everybody is feeling pretty crappy right now.

…

So half of these names human-names are going to be ones I found for myself so I'll give you a list so you won't be as confused. The ones I made up names for I used a name with the same first letter (in English anyway) as the country. Ukraine and Denmark's names are pulled from previous fanon.

Ukraine - Yekaterina  
Czech - Cestmir  
Netherlands (Holland) - Hugrecht  
Belgium - Beatrix  
Luxembourg - Lotte  
Denmark - Mathias  
Norway - Nils

…

Gilbert's head hit the concrete because he couldn't move his arms to catch himself when he stumbled, pushed, into the room. He tried to swear but there seemed to be too much blood and mucus in his throat and he instead began to cough before the breath was slammed out of his lungs by Ludwig landing half on top of him. He was aware of the sounds of the steel door being pulled shut and barred behind them while he fought for air.

"... Well ho~ly shit," an annoyingly familiar voice said from somewhere on the right.

"Now is really not the time, Mathias," Roderich's voice sounded beyond tired. He pulled Ludwig up and tried to lean him against the wall (Ludwig rejected the position and tipped himself back over to lie in as close as he could manage to a fetal ball with his hands bound behind his back) before moving to gather up Gilbert. He thumped on Gilbert's back a few times as Gilbert wheezed and tried to clear his throat.

"Not the time? Huh, I wonder what is the time then!" Mathias sounded livid, like someone just about to start yelling or punching. "If you think that I'm going to feel sorry for these pathetic wastes of space, you are sadly mistaken, Austria! All that makes me pause is wondering why they are cuffed and you are not?"

"Because I didn't try to throttle our escorts," Roderich snapped, fussing behind Gilbert's back with the handcuffs. Gilbert tried to say that he should have, but what came out was a pathetic, gurgley mumble. "Yes, of course, and then who would get these off of you?" Roderich replied, knowing Gilbert well enough to interpret the angry little sound. A moment later there was a click and the cuff around his left wrist slid open.

Rather than freeing the other wrist, Roderich moved over to Ludwig, and Gilbert felt a selfish urge to whine about being abandoned but managed to restrain it while Roderich worked on his brother's handcuffs.

"I suppose you wouldn't, would you! You do stick by your principles of utter complacency!" Mathias snarled.

"Mathias, shut up," another voice, it sounded like Nils, came from the corner next to Mathias. Gilbert tried to lift himself a bit to look around the room, but a fresh bloom of pain in his stomach protested the movement and he instead let himself flop down on the floor with a grunt.

"Ho-" Gilbert choked and coughed a few times before trying again to form words. "How many 'r here?" he managed to mumble before having to cough again.

"Everyone," a soft, feminine voice said and when he rolled himself, with great effort, onto his back, he could see two pairs of nice legs coming over the side of a cot. Lotte, he registered, as the nearer one leaned over a little bit so he could catch sight of the top of her head. The movement looked a little awkward and weighed down, however, and Gilbert got the impression that somebody's head was in her lap. On the far side of the second pair of legs Hugrecht was sitting on the floor with his own legs crossed in front of him. He looked back at Gilbert impassively.

"Everyone?" Gilbert asked, trying to think of whom that entailed was making his already throbbing head hurt worse. Next to him he heard Roderich get one of Ludwig's wrists loose and start working on the other.

"Yeah, everyone," Mathias snapped. "All the helpless conquered of your mighty Third Reich!" Mathias was up and moving around, clearly in better health than some of the room's occupants. He dropped down over Gilbert, glaring disdainfully. "I oughta flatten you right now..."

Gilbert took advantage of the mouth-full of blood he'd collected and spat it in Mathias' face. Mathias recoiled slightly and then made a sound like an angry animal and threw himself forward, punching Gilbert hard in the jaw and knocking his head hard into the floor.

"Stop it!" Roderich sounded panicked, Gilbert noted with a mild satisfaction as he curled in on himself and tried unsuccessfully to block another blow from the furious Dane. There were other sounds of protest around the room, and then somebody was trying to pull Mathias off of him.

"God damn it, let me go!" Mathias fumed, fighting against the arms trying to restrain his. "They deserve everything they get!"

"You're just making this whole thing worse!" Nils snapped back, trying to tug him back to where he'd been sitting before. "There's not enough space to fight in here and whatever you do to him won't be half as bad as whatever Ivan does when he shows up!"

"Would you shut up already? I totally have a headache and you're so not helping," Felix's weary voice whined from the other side of the room.

"Please, Mathias, I'm too tired for this right now..." Yekaterina pleaded from the same direction. Gilbert tilted his head to the side and could see somebody's shoulder and hip above a second cot on the other side of the room. Somebody else appeared to be tucked into the corner between the cot and the back wall as well, knees curled up to their chin. There wasn't a uniform, the clothes were plain, almost prison attire. The body under them looked male, small.

Mathias relented and let himself be pulled back into the corner with Nils as Gilbert spat a fresh mouthful of blood. The blows hadn't particularly bothered Gilbert; it actually felt rather nice to have some external pain to compliment the opus of agony inside of his body. And the attack seemed to have regained him Roderich's attention as the Austrian was now pulling Gilbert against him and seeking out the cuff still pinching his right wrist. Gilbert leaned his head against Roderich's shoulder and strained to catch his breath. Lotte's mention of 'everyone' had not been very descriptive and so he tried to mentally run down the list of occupied states to guess who was in the corner. "S'at Cestmir back there?"

"I'm here," Cestmir's voice called back quietly, sounding exhausted.

"All right?" Gilbert left off the 'not that I care' which normally should have accompanied such an inquiry.

"Better than some..."

"Katerina?"

"I'm just tired. I'll be all right," Yekaterina mumbled from the cot. 'All right,' by Soviet standards could mean 'barely clinging to life,' but Gilbert decided not to question her.

" 'n Felix?"

"He's... depressed..." she said quietly. "He hasn't spoken much since they razed his castle..."

So the Nazis had made good on their threat; Gilbert wondered how much more news of this nature they had missed while they were 'infirmed.' The Warsaw castle was as much a symbol of Poland as Felix himself, if not more so. Seeing it downed must have been a crushing blow to his pride.

Now that he was sitting up a bit higher, he twisted himself to try and see who was on the cot with Lotte, but was stopped by a series of stabbing pains in his ribs and gut that made him flinch hard. "Stop moving," Roderich said quietly, trying to resettle him and Gilbert gave in, resting his chin against the Austrian's chest and closing his eyes for the moment.

"Lotte?" he called to satisfy his curiosity. "Who's up there with you?"

"Bea... And Francis..." her voice was soft but it wasn't tired in the way the Slavs voices had been, the sound was something more like hesitance. That and the fact that Francis' presence could possibly go unnoticed in such a small, enclosed space made Gilbert frown, worried.

"He's in a bad ways..." Beatrix's voice came from next to Lotte.

That didn't make sense. Francis certainly shouldn't have been in worse shape than Felix, much less Gilbert and Ludwig, with the front raging right on top of their heads. "Wh-y?" Gilbert mumbled.

"... He hasn't been on French soil or had any contact with his people in four years," Hugrecht said from next to Beatrix's feet.

"Jesus Christ," Roderich breathed near Gilbert's forehead. "They weren't keeping him in Vichy?"

"... They might have thought his presence would be too much of an influence on the moral of the French people..." Lotte whispered. "... Or maybe it was just cruelty."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Mathias grumbled from the corner before making a strange little 'hwoof!' sound that might have been an elbow to the ribs from Nils.

"He's sleeping," Beatrix said, barely audible and with a slight shake in her voice that seemed to herald tears. "He doesn't stay lucid more than a few minutes at a time..."

"Christ," Gilbert mumbled and tried to find a position where his gut didn't hurt like blazes while still leaning on his Austrian pillow. "... Where's Tino?"

"Still loose," Mathias' voice sounded amused, his anger apparently fading momentarily for benefit of a pleasant subject. "Last I heard, he was sniping the shit out of your troops from the mountains. That little son of a bitch always manages to surprise me. I'm definitely gonna buy him a drink when I get out of here."

"That's... good," Gilbert mused quietly and with full sincerity. "Huh..."

"Oh shut the fuck up," Mathias snapped irritably, foul mood reasserting itself. A few minutes passed in silence before he spoke again, in a voice brimming with sarcasm. "So what news do you bring us from the surface, oh righteous masters."

"... They haven't given us news in four years. And I doubt that much of it before that was very accurate," Roderich replied in clipped, irritable tones.

There was a momentary silence before Mathias started laughing. "Well don't that just take the cake!"

Another muffled whine came from Felix that sounded like an elongated 'Shut up.'

Mathias ignored him, continuing to laugh even as a minor scuffle broke out with Nils. "So-so you're saying the bastard put you, his own damn country in lock-up?" there was more than a hint of hysteria in his laughter now.

"Officially, we've been hospitalized," Roderich sighed and finally seemed to settle himself in for a long stay, leaning back against the wall and finding a comfortable position for his arms around Gilbert. "The medical facility was more similar to a mental asylum, of course."

Mathias laughed harder, definitely falling into hysteria now as Nils gave up trying to reason and set to work attempting to make a gag. It was a quiet, bleary mumble that finally seemed to bring Mathias back to his senses and he quieted, though his rapid, agitated breathing could still be clearly heard throughout the room.

"... Ce qui se passe?"

"Shhh, don't move, mon cher, just rest," Lotte soothed, a tone of affection trying to cover the worry in her voice.

"It's almost over," Beatrix said as she moved, crouching down in front of the cot, perhaps to examine Francis' state more closely.

"You are as kind as you are beautiful, mes cheries..."

Gilbert cleared his throat to make his voice as clear and strong as possible as he called across the room. "Hang in there, Franky. The Russians are in the city now so it shouldn't be long before a surrender."

"Gilbert?" Francis lifted his head just enough to catch sight of the other nation before letting it fall back again. "Aren't the Russians supposed to be on your side?"

"They were until _mein Furhr_ thought that perhaps Napoleon just didn't try hard enough."

He could hear Francis chuckle weakly. "How unfortunate that he does not study his history better. And they are in your city, you say?"

"The line is getting closer by the minute, I expect."

"Comment dites-vous... fucked?"

Gilbert started to laugh but it ended in a painful series of coughs. "Now I don't for a minute believe that there is any language on the planet you can't say that word in."

There was another soft chuckle. "You sound terrible, cher. I do suppose that you shou..." Francis' voice trailed off into quiet mumbles and then silence.

"... Franky? ... Francis?" Gilbert called, feeling a prickle of worry.

"... He's sleeping again," Lotte said quietly.

Gilbert sighed, closing his eyes again and relaxing back against Roderich. "This is all fucked. What the hell."

"You're the one who let it get this way," Mathias snarled.

Gilbert gritted his teeth and started to pull away from Roderich again to snap off a retort when someone beat him to it.

"No," Ludwig's voice came out congested and muffled. "That was me..."

"Ignore him," Roderich said. "He's just trying to pick a fight. There are many parties to blame."

"Oh fuck you, Austria!"

"Shh!" Beatrix and Lotte both snapped sharply and the sounds of a small scuffle may have been Nils and Hugrecht trying to keep the Dane seated.

"Shut uuuup," Felix demanded, starting to sound less whiney and more angry. "Your voices are making me sick."

"We're going to be together for days, at least," Hugrecht asserted. "Can you please try to be civil at least while we're in here. Roderich is right, Mathias, now is not the time."

There was an irritated growl, but the Dane apparently gave in because things became quiet again.

"... West?" Gilbert called quietly after things had settled.

"Ng?"

"You okay?"

"G'nn try t' sleep," Ludwig mumbled.

"Y'okay on the floor?"

"M like t' floor."

"... Okay." Gilbert tucked his head under Roderich's chin and closed his eyes, trying to block out the pain and let his exhaustion take him into blissful nothingness.

…

A/N: Why I decided to have Denmark freaking the hell out in this scene, Denmark was really defiant/pissed-off while occupied, they didn't fight directly but they made sure no Nazis were going to profit off them; ie. German soldiers did not eat rations canned in Denmark because they would usually have metal shavings or other nasty surprises mixed into the food. Since Denmark is a peninsula and didn't get stuck in between two major powers that were duking it out (like Poland and Ukraine who practically changed hands on a daily basis) he is in much better shape than the more inland countries in the room. He's been occupied but he hasn't been repeatedly bludgeoned the way, say, Poland has.


	14. The Bunker Pt2

**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Bunker Part Two  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):**  
**Rating:** 13  
**Warnings:** violence, history and swearing  
**Summary:** They're still in the bunker when Russian forces finally roll through Berlin.  
**Previous:**

…

Half of these human-names are going to be ones I found for myself so I'll give you a list so you won't be as confused. The ones I made up names for I used a name with the same first letter (in English anyway) as the country. And APPARENTLY, the list failed to load up on the FFnet version last time, so appologies to readers from that end... I've fixed it but those of you who got their earlier must have been terribly confused...

Ukraine - Yekaterina  
Czech - Cestmir  
Netherlands (Holland) - Hugrecht  
Belgium - Beatrix  
Luxembourg - Lotte  
Denmark - Mathias  
Norway - Nils

The shelling seemed to drop off somewhat. The muffled explosions were more distant and didn't shake the bunker anymore. A period of relative quiet stretched on in darkness, the electric lighting having failed after a particularly loud explosion. After an indeterminate length of time the reprieve was interrupted by the sounds of rapid machine-gun fire close by; outside, in the hall. The occupants of the bunker went quiet and still, waiting with an anxious mix of dread and expectation. When the door at last swung open, bringing some small amount of light with it, the first thing through it was a gun and the second thing was the soldier carrying it.

"HANDS UP! HANDS UP! IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!" the soldier shouted, swinging the gun in front of him threateningly.

Ludwig didn't bother to move. He doubted if he'd be able to lift his arms if he tried and he didn't think being shot would add very much to the pain he was already in.

"Please listen!" Yekaterina's voice shouted from the back of the bunker, addressing the soldier in his own language, "I am Yekaterina Braginski! Please tell my brother that I am here!"

There was a pause and then the soldier responded, "I will. Stay here," and the door was pulled shut again.

"... Oh God, I wish she hadn't done that..." Gilbert mumbled nearby.

"It had to happen sooner or later," Roderich sighed next to him.

"Later is totally better than sooner," Feliks whined. "Why would you do that, Katkat?"

"Don't be worried, Feliks, Ivan will put things to rights," Yekaterina's voice was warm and reassuring though her words seemed more delusional than anything.

"Yekaterina, you are a lovely, trusting person," Cestmir's voice had more than a hint of exasperation in it. "But you really need to understand that your brother is psychotic."

"He has been fighting for _our_ freedom, you know."

"... Your brother did not care nor notice for one moment when I was anexed," Cestmir's tone sounded as though he were fighting back the urge to shout.

"You will see, my brother will have this all in hand and we will soon be free."

"I'd laugh if it weren't so sad," Gilbert drawled.

"Please, could you try not to be offensive just _once_ in your life," Roderich pleaded, sounding desperate.

"I do hope you three have fun being the newest Russian province," Mathias said in an acidic tone.

Ludwig tried to tune out the brewing argument and concentrated on the cold cement under his cheek. It helped to stem the feverish heat and nausea, one small relief to the pain his body was in.

Somebody had soon made Gilbert and Mathias stop yelling at each other again and there were a few minutes of precious quiet, when Ludwig could pretend his head didn't hurt quite so much as it did. Unfortunately, all not-terrible things must come to an end and when the door opened again it crashed loudly, making Ludwig flinch and curl in on himself a little more.

"_Good morning!_" Ivan sounded positively elated. Ludwig gingerly lifted his head to look towards the doorway and saw a pistol pointed right into his face for an instant before the muzzle-flash, and then a redistribution of the pain in his body, blinded him. He slammed back into the floor and lay there for a moment, dazed, before his abused lungs seemed to catch up with the situation and he started coughing again. "Ah good! You're the real one then! Always nice to be sure!" the Russian laughed above him.

"Ivan!"

As Ludwig's senses began to reorder themselves, he could hear Yekaterina scrambling across the room. Her footsteps sounded awkward and when she passed in front of him, he could see, even from his angle on the floor, that she was limping very badly. Her legs seemed to give out and Ivan moved forward to catch her before her knees hit the ground.

At the same time, surer footsteps ran past her into the bunker. "Feliks! You're here!"

A whispered conversation started at the side of the bunker as Yekaterina began hiccuping and mumbling very fast. The Russian words were too muffled and slurred for Ludwig to pick out meaning in them, it sounded like she was pressing her face into thick fabric, Ivan's coat perhaps.

"Not yet, Katyusha, not yet. But soon," Ivan said in a softer voice than Ludwig had ever heard from the large man. "They will be surrendering any day."

"I can stand with you, Brother, I can fight!" Yekaterina said, her voice confidant though the hint of tears could still be heard in it. Ludwig very much doubted that Yekaterina could indeed fight. She had barely managed to walk the short distance across the bunker.

"You rest now, Sister, you have already fought," Ivan's voice sounded uncharacteristically gentle as he spoke to his sister. "You'll stay here for now. It's not safe outside."

"B-but-"

"Stay here, Katyusha. Do this for me."

"Yes, brother," Yekaterina said softly and stepped away from her brother.

"Toris!" Ivan called back into the bunker, his voice completely different than the one he'd used with his sister.

"But I-"

"_Now_, Toris!" the command sounded distinctly threatening and Ludwig could hear the Lithuanian scrambling to obey.

"Toriiii..." Feliks whined pathetically from his cot.

"Do not worry, my friends, this will be over very quickly now and then you can all be moved somewhere more comfortable," Ivan announced in a robust, cheerful voice.

"Ivan, Francis has to go home as soon as possible," Lotte's voice came half-demanding, half-pleading.

"Travel westward is not yet possible, I'm afraid. It will have to wait."

"But as _soon_ as it's possible-"

"All measures will be taken to insure a possessive outcome to this crisis," Ivan said firmly. "For now there are more pressing matters."

Ludwig saw Ivan's feet come fully into his line of vision and then closer. Gilbert's voice suddenly rang out, sounding alarmed, angry, "What the hell are you-"

For the second time, the pain in his body seemed to redistribute to a larger concentration in his head and it took Ludwig a while to understand that he had been grabbed by the hair and was being dragged. He coughed and sputtered helplessly and pulled at Ivan's wrist, trying to relieve some of the pressure from his scalp, but he was too weak to pull against his own weight and the friction of his legs dragging on the ground. He vaguely heard the door slam shut against his brother's furious screaming. He could feel tears building on his cheeks again, it hardly seemed like they'd been dry for a moment in recent weeks.

"You should feel privileged, Ludwig!" Ivan half-sang. "You get to come with me and watch as I crush your pathetic Nazis under my heel!"


	15. The Forgotten Pt1

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Forgotten Pt1  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** England, US, Canada, Russia, Latvia, Austria, Prussia, Germany  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** Angst!  
**Summary:** Western Allied forces arrive in a broken Berlin, devastated by its suicide-battle with the Russian forces.

…

Alfred was chewing on his knuckles again as he watched the ruined city roll past outside the window of their jeep. He'd been displaying a greater range of nervous ticks and anxious behaviors with every passing day since they'd landed in Normandy. Arthur watched him apathetically for a minute before reaching over and tugging Alfred's hand away from his mouth. "Stop that," he scolded quietly. The younger nation gave his chewed knuckles a slightly surprised look and let his hand fall back down to the bench-seat between them.

"We're here," Matthew said from the front passenger's seat a few moments later, and Arthur felt a strange mix of relief and dread at the words.

" ZDRAST-VUJ!"

Arthur made a small, involuntary cringe at the greeting as he climbed out of the jeep. He looked up to see Ivan loping across the broken pavement to meet them. He was limping very badly and as he neared, Arthur could see a smear of blood across his upper lip as though he'd been having intermittent nosebleeds throughout the day. His eyes were terribly blood-shot but somehow still looked bright on his proudly grinning face as he reached them.

"You made good time!" Ivan noted, teeth showing in his smile. "How are things in the West?"

"Rather bleak," Matthew said with a sigh. "But it's quiet now, at least."

"What about here?" Alfred asked, looking around. "Did you send the others home yet?"

"Da, those girls would not shut-up until there was a truck to take France and them back in. They wanted to go by _plane_, can you believe it!" Ivan laughed. "These women are far too spoiled!"

"What about Tori?"

"He wanted to see the Pole back to his home," Ivan said, his grin shifting into something more resembling a sneer. "Irresponsible. He does not appreciate the gravity of this situation enough. Yekaterina was ready to stay as long as needed, even when her people are in such a desperate state. I sent her home; her presence will lift their spirits. Toris and his brothers are still here, and they will be until everything is settled."

Alfred looked like he wanted to say something about that and so Arthur broke in before he could open his mouth. "And Ludwig and Gilbert? Where are they?" he asked.

Ivan chuckled. "I thought that I should leave them locked in that cell," he said with a cheerful little shrug. "But I do have mercy, and I have never seen anyone so pathetic. They are being taken care of." He nodded back toward the capitol building.

"I'd like to see them," Arthur said, because he didn't trust Ivan as far as he could throw the HMS Dreadnought.

"Of course!" Ivan grinned easily back at him. "I expected you would!" He gestured for them to follow as he turned and limped back towards the main doors.

In an upstairs room that looked like it had been designed for a conference table, three hospital beds had been set up, turning the room into a make-shift medical ward. There was a startled little gasp and a thump as they came through the door and Arthur looked to see Ravis picking himself up off the floor and looking nervous. "Nobody has died yet?" Ivan asked him in a jovial tone, thumping the boy on the shoulder.

"N-no. They're still here," Ravis answered, chewing on his lip and looking with anxious curiosity at the western nations that had accompanied Ivan.

Arthur moved past them and went to investigate the beds. He felt a slight surge of alarm at finding the first one empty, Ivan's comment about the possibility of one of them dying echoing in his mind for a moment before a soft voice called, "He's over here."

Roderich was pale and drawn, his bed propped him up a bit so that he could look over at Arthur without straining, and Gilbert's head was visible over the edge of the blanket, tucked up against Roderich's chest.

"He said he was cold," Roderich explained.

"He's an attention-whore is what he is," a chuckle came easily to Arthur with the flush of relief that the other nation was still alive and present, even though both his eyes looked bruised and his skin was sallow.

"That too," Roderich agreed, a faint smile on his lips, as he leaned back against his pillow, looking very ill and exhausted.

Arthur looked over to the third bed and noticed that Alfred and Matthew were near it already and both looking quite disturbed. "... He's in bad shape," he heard Roderich say quietly and Arthur just nodded, not looking at him. He moved over next to the North American nations to get a better look at Ludwig.

Only his head and shoulders were visible above the blankets but even with so little exposed, Ludwig still looked utterly battered. Patchy bruises and swelling were strewn about his skin, up into the hairline and down into the collar of his shirt. A line of sutures ran above his left eyebrow and another near his jaw. A section of his hair was packed down in a stiff, purple-brown clot. Butterflies held together the prowed lips of a jagged slice on his cheek; it looked infected. Nearly an inch of his lower lip was a scab and a large portion of his chin bellow that. There were little spatters of fresh-looking blood on the pillow under his head and a few fingerprints on the blanket, as though he'd been coughing up fluids minutes earlier.

"... Is he going to die?"

Arthur looked up at Alfred, surprised, and found that the boy seemed to be shaking slightly and looking scared like Arthur hadn't seen him since childhood. Arthur blinked a few times, not quite believing, and certainly not understanding, the strange expression on Alfred's face. And Matthew was looking to Arthur, the same question in his eyes, almost pleading for some hope that their _enemy_ would live. They were both so young, and for the large part, sheltered from the bloodthirsty legacies of their European counterparts. They'd never seen one of their own kind looking like this.

Actually, come to that, Arthur had never seen one of them _this bad_ either. Civil wars tended to have an especially nasty effect on the anthropomorphizations of countries, as much or more so to their psyche than their bodies, but _this_ was above and beyond anything Arthur had ever even heard of. This was more than brother-fighting-brother, this was like drinking poison and cutting your own wrists on a daily basis.

"No. Of course not," Arthur said quietly, although a voice in the back of his mind wondered whether he was being entirely truthful. "He'll recover."

…

A/N: The line in there about US and Canada being "sheltered from the bloodthirsty legacies of their European counterparts" is meant to be from Arthur's perspective. I know there's enough blood-thirst to go round in the Americas during the colonial period and things, but Arthur sees them as pretty innocent.


	16. The Forgotten Pt2

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Forgotten Pt2  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** CanadaUK, implied US/UK  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** Angst!  
**Summary:** Canada want's England to stop brooding over America.

…

Ludwig had woken up and Alfred was sitting with him, talking, apparently trying to cheer up the nation that he _was still technically at war with_. Matthew seemed to have disappeared, Arthur hadn't noticed when he'd left or the disappearance of Ivan and Ravis. He'd exchanged a short dialogue with Roderich but he had dozed off, Gilbert tucked against him. Even in their battered condition, Arthur was still drawn in by the sweet _closeness_ of the scene. It was something he'd seen in most of his European counterparts, sometimes fighting, sometimes at peace, but always a closeness that he never quite seemed to forge with any of them. Although he had held some strange sort of relationship with Francis through most of his life, the English Channel was surprisingly wide and Francis was always much closer to the nations bordering him than to Arthur.

Alfred had always had a great affection for the "huddled masses." Though he'd blundered and crushed many fragile things, as all nations did in their youth, he had always been so enchanted when someone _needed_ him. He'd been so zealous to help the Spanish colonies break away; at the time, even though they'd been more or less allies, Arthur had wondered if he was reliving his own revolution through the Spanish colonies. He'd given up that idea in recent years however, it was just the way Alfred was, he always got so desperately attached to pitiful things.

The anger, the hatred, the boundless fighting energy he'd been riding for four and a half years, had suddenly vanished the minute he laid eyes on his 'enemy.' Now he was crouching next to the hospital bed with nothing but pity and sympathy on his features. Because he couldn't stand the sight of pain; he would shrink away from it if he could, choose not to see, but when forced to confront pain, tragedy, devastation, he threw all the passion that had fueled him through the fight into inconsolable pity.

The vanquished enemy became the friend in need, and Alfred loved nothing so much as being needed. Arthur watched him start a cigarette for Ludwig; Ludwig looked near-blissful as he inhaled the nicotine. Before this, it had been England that needed the support of America. Now England was safe and all but forgotten. And after slaying the dragon, Alfred was more concerned about the orphaned eggs he found in its nest than the kingdom he'd come to protect. Arthur cast another long look at him before turning away and walking out into the hall, feeling a pang of something like loss.

"... The front itself isn't as horrible as last time," a quiet, thoughtful voice said near him, making Arthur turn to see Matthew leaning against the wall and gazing into space. "It's not so much horrible what we've done to each other, this time, but more... what they've done to _themselves_... That's the difference." He turned his eyes on Arthur, "Or do you think maybe it's the not-doing? Because of how many of us didn't put a stop to it when it was small, because we didn't want to be involved?"

Arthur looked back at him silently for a while, considering the question. "I'm not sure... But, I know now that it's not enough to simply assume everyone got the message... A lack of war doesn't necessarily mean peace."

"Mm," Matt agreed quietly, a small, sad smile on his lips. He looked up at Arthur and gave a small nod down the hall. Arthur followed and walked along side him, away from the make-shift hospital room. "So then, I suppose there is no War to End All Wars, is there? Even having seen this, just the knowledge isn't enough to put a stop to it," Matthew mused.

"It seems not," Arthur agreed, sighing.

"But if the League of Nations wasn't enough, what can we do? If discourse doesn't work, what else is there?"

Arthur shook his head slowly as they reached the stairs and a group of officers passed them, headed in the other direction. "The League was a good idea, at least at it's core. I believe that. We just haven't perfected it yet."

"How many wars like this do you think it would take to perfect?" Matthew's voice was smaller than before and his brow was creased.

"Perhaps we won't let them get to this stage again." Arthur gave him a small, encouraging smile and reached up to squeeze Matt's shoulder.

"I hope so," Matt said, returning the smile.

A few minutes later, they were sitting on a couch in one of the downstairs offices that didn't have any meetings being held there for the moment. Arthur leaned his head back and gazed up at the cracked ceiling. He could see places where chunks of plaster had fallen down during the fighting. "I wonder... if I'm terrible for thinking that maybe I'm going to miss it..." he said quietly. He could feel Matthew turn to look at him. "When there's not a war, and no alliances to form or battles to fight, it seems like there's no reason at all that any of us should ever see each other..."

"... Maybe we can make other reasons," Matthew said after a long, thoughtful pause. "Air travel is making the world smaller. Visiting across the Atlantic doesn't require months being dedicated to it like it used to."

"... It doesn't, does it..."

"And there's the Olympics," Matthew said, a smile audible in his voice as he slipped his hand into Arthur's. "Every four years, think of that. It's hardly any time at all." He laced their fingers and leaned against Arthur. "And sports can be a substitute for wars too. Like rugby."

Arthur moved his head a bit as Matt nuzzled his shoulder, leaning subtly away from it. "There's no alliances in the Olympics, of course. Everyone is their own team."

"True," Matt said next to his collar, "but competition can be friendly, can't it?"

"It can," Arthur agreed with a little smile. He mused that if Alfred weren't so contrary and stubborn, if they didn't argue at every turn, what on Earth would they ever talk about? The thought made him chuckle softly.

But then, they probably wouldn't have as much time to argue now that somebody needed Alfred more than him.

Beside him, Matthew was still and quiet for several minutes. When he moved, his eyelashes brushed Arthur's neck with a slight tickling sensation a moment before his lips landed softly over the spot. Arthur bit the tip of his tongue lightly and closed his eyes, feeling irritated, and guilty because of that.

"I'll always love you, you know," Matthew whispered, pulling away to look at him, but Arthur didn't open his eyes. "No conditions, no getting bored, no forgetting you or leaving you behind or being too busy or too _selfish_... I'll love you every day, even when I can't see you."

Arthur's stomach tightened and he bit down on his tongue harder. The statement, _promise_, was too straight-forward to misinterpret or ignore. "... Matthew, you are the most stead-fast, loyal person I have ever known..." Arthur said in a measured tone.

"But." Matt moved away a bit more, and Arthur opened his eyes to watch him curling in on himself a bit, looking like he was trying very hard not to look miserable.

"... But even though you're grown, there's too much... There's too much of a paternal feeling there... It's... awkward..." Arthur lifted his head off the back of the couch and hunched himself forward a bit, looking at the ground ahead of him.

"Of course," Matthew said quietly, hair bouncing slightly as he nodded his head.

"I... I'm sorry..."

Matthew was silent for a moment, leaning forward, arms loosely hugged around himself, and then he moved suddenly, one hand landing on Arthur's shoulder and the other on the far side of the couch, fencing him in with Matthew's lips not an inch from his, pleading. "Don't you think that just for a moment you could pretend that I'm Alfred? We look so much alike, it's really not that hard to pretend, is it?" His eyes weren't meeting Arthur's but looking down, lids half-shut and trembling slightly like the hand on Arthur's shoulder.

"Matthew, please don't," Arthur whispered, feeling terrible that Matt would suggest something like that and worse that it seemed almost plausible.

"I'm sorry,' Matthew said quickly. He was back on his side of the couch in a second and father away now than he had been when they first sat down. He stared at his feet and let his hair hide his face from Arthur.

…

A/N: The cigarette in there was kinda significant. The Nazi party was anti-smoking and smoking can be regarded as an anti-Nazi statement (which is a reason that anti-smoking campaigns don't work all that great in Germany...)  
The four years on the Olympics, because there weren't Winter Olympics yet at that point.  
The reference Matt made to rugby in there, because rugby originally started as a way of settling a feud rather than dueling or some such. Village rugby in England is supposed to be hilarious and terrifying to watch, because it's played without particular goal markers and all *through* the town, through houses and shit... So, that's why rugby is such a brutal sport, it's basically organized brawling.  
BTW, The Forgotten is going to have _three_ parts. Ooh, I'm mixin' it up now.


	17. The Forgotten Pt3

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: The Forgotten Pt3  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** US/UK  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** Angst, genocide  
**Summary:** America is reminded of a mistake from his past and confides in England about it.

…

"Arthur?"

A hand was squeezed his shoulder as Arthur was pulled back into consciousness by the voice. "Ngh?" he mumbled.

"I... I know I shouldn't have asked in front of him like that or anything, but I- I was surprised and that makes me kinda stupid..."

"Alfred... what is it...?" Arthur sighed, rubbing sleep from his eyes and looking over at the vague outline of the younger nation in the darkness.

"Do you think he's going to die?" Alfred's voice was very small and scared.

"... What?" Arthur pushed himself into a sitting position and reached over, finding Alfred's arm in the darkness. It was bare and Arthur could feel gooseflesh under his fingers. "Where is your damn coat?"

He pushed back his blankets and tugged at Alfred's arm. Alfred complied by carefully crawling on top of him and settling awkwardly down, leaning his head on Arthur's chest while Arthur pulled the blankets back over the both of them. The cot wasn't made to take the weight of two grown men and it made a few sounds of protest, but it didn't break. Alfred shivered against him and tried to find a relatively comfortable position for both of them in the narrow space. "B-but really," he whispered. "Do you think he's going to die?"

"Ludwig?"

"Yeah."

"No. It's over now and he's still here. What's gotten into you?" Arthur laid his arms around Alfred's shoulders and tried not to think about the cot collapsing under him.

"It's... It's just..." Alfred mumbled, and even in such a close space it felt as though he was clinging more than was entirely necessary.

"What?" Arthur prompted, lifting his hand to stroke Alfred's hair.

"... Th-that's how Iroquois looked." Alfred made a small hiccuping sound. "And then, and then I never saw him again. He just... disappeared."

Arthur was quiet for a while, realization dawning on him. That was what had upset Alfred so badly, not Ludwig in particular, but a hidden guilt from the past. "Ludwig's not going to die. Not right now," he said, fingers combing through Alfred's tresses. "We try to learn from our mistakes when we can."

Alfred hiccuped again. "Th-those people, in the camps..." he mumbled.

"Those are the kind of images that will haunt you for a long time," Arthur whispered back. "You have to remember that we saved them, they're alive now, they'll live because we saved them."

Alfred's head moved a little, as though he were barely shaking it. "I-I thought..." his voice grew even smaller than before, "... it wasn't that different from a reservation..."

Arthur's fingers stilled near Alfred's ear and then he wrapped his arms tighter around the younger nation in an awkward hug. "Oh Alfred..." he sighed, his nose and mouth pressed to Alfred's crown. "You can't make that comparison... There were no gas-chambers in the reservations."

"There were guns..." Alfred whispered. "And the people were hungry too much of the time." He shook and Arthur could feel tears soaking into his vest and hear the sniffle in Alfred's voice. "And there were the marches... I made them walk and walk and the old ones died of exposure..."

"Shhhh." Arthur went back to stroking his hair. "As you get older, you're going to regret a lot of things," he said quietly. "Because there are things that seem like a really good idea at the time, but they don't work the way you thought they would and you'll wish you'd just left them alone. And that's part of our lives. That's something we have to deal with." He laid a kiss on Alfred's forehead. "I want you to remember this. You tried to civilize the American-Indians because you thought it was better for them. Hitler and his Nazis hated the people that they killed. You were wrong out of love, they was wrong out of hate."

"W-why does it matter when th-the result is the s-same?" Alfred whimpered.

"It matters." He kissed Alfred's head again. "It matters a lot."


	18. Mortification

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Mortification  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Japan  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** self-mutilation  
**Summary:** Spring 1945, Japan readies himself to take his honor to the grave.

1945

Perhaps he should have done this outside, Kiku thought. In the garden, where the sakura were just starting to open. Right now they were a mix of tender pink blossoms and little red buds. Soon the petals would start to fall.

It was two weeks of transient beauty that encapsulated and evoked all that was meaningful in the world. For two weeks, the sakura would bloom. For a few short years, Japan had been the greatest, strongest nation. The continent and the ocean had belonged to him, for just a little while.

If a thing is not fleeting, it is worthless.

The _tanto_ had sunk into his belly with more ease than Kiku was expecting. It's all soft organs there, no bones, but still, he hadn't thought the knife would divide the muscle of his abdomen quite so effortlessly. He looked down at the tool with vague curiosity. The blood wasn't welling up around it yet, not yet soaking into the pristine, white fabric of his uniform.

But he wasn't finished either. Maybe some seconds would have ended the ceremony after a mere pin-prick like this, but Kiku hadn't enlisted a second in the first place and besides, he wanted the full experience of self-disembowelment. With careful precision, Kiku tightened his grip and dragged up on the hilt, pulling the hidden blade towards his ribs.

The pain was almost immobilizing. Almost.

It was necessary; honorable. He would honor his people as they honored him. They would never be taken alive. They would never grovel and weep before the Western powers. They would never forfeit their pride, their virtue, to foreign barbarians. Never crawl on their knees and play prostitute to inferior nations.

Not like China had.

No, an honorable death was far preferable to what the Americans would have in store for them.

There was a knock on the door. Kiku meant to call out with an inquisitive 'Yes?' in reply, but the sound that came from his throat was an odd sort of croak.

The door opened with a slight hesitance and a secretary poked his head in. He blanched when his eyes fell upon Kiku. "_H-Honda-sama!_" he said in a horrified gasp.

Kiku pulled the _tanto_ out of his gut and let it drop on the floor in front of him before going to push himself up from where he was kneeling in front of his desk. His hands slipped on the floor and he glanced down at them. The blood seemed to be coming now. A wide patch of his jacket-front was a deep crimson, the color of the unopened buds on the sakura trees, and the stain was continuing to spread outward at the corners.

He wobbled slightly when he got to his feet. The opening he'd made didn't seem to be closing with any great urgency. He should have been recovering faster. He should have been stronger. He should have had just a little bit longer to reach his potential, before withering and loosing all his petals.

"What is it?" he asked the secretary, his voice coming out dry and cracked, as though he were parched.

"'Th-the G-general wants to... see you..." the secretary whispered, his eyes wide and terrified as he stared at his country.

"Of course." Kiku nodded and weaved toward the door, stumbling slightly and feeling very light-headed. "Get somebody to clean that up, please," he murmured to the secretary as he passed him.

"Y-yes," the secretary returned, watching him stagger into the hall.

...

A/N: Oh my God, Sakura blossoms, could I be more cleche? But the timing fits (sakura bloom in late-March, early-April, and that's right around when Japan realized they were loosing bad) and seriously, if you study much art-history for Japan (I count poetry in this category), the entire Japanese sense of aesthetics really is based around sakura blossoms. There is all kinds of philosophical writings about them and an entire culture that's emo over flowers. It's called 哀れ (a-wa-re) and it's all about the beauty of pain, y'know, like those goth-kids in the corner are totally into angst. Oh, by the way, Japanese citizens were really committing suicide in massive numbers at this point rather than surrender to Allied troops, that's what this whole thing was about, if you didn't already get that...

So, actually, I posted this one back in February on Livejournal and only just realized that I never put it up on FFnet. Er, sorry.


	19. Wake of Destruction

**Series:** Hetalia  
**Title:** Scorched-Earth Drabbles: Wake of Destruction Pt1  
**Author:** Fictatious  
**Character(s):** Prussia, Germany  
**Rating:** 15  
**Warnings:** dead people  
**Summary:** Gilbert expresses having a problem with the way the invasion of Poland was handled.

1939

Gilbert felt dazed as he walked through the city next to his brother. It was grotesque. He had seen cities ravaged by war before, many times. He had been responsible for them on numerous occasions. But he hadn't seen anything quite like this. He was having trouble putting his finger on just what was wrong, but his thoughts came into focus as his eyes landed on one particular travesty.

He veered off from his path and moved over to examine two of the corpses on the street more closely. The woman was laying sprawled on the ground, where she had obviously fallen forward after being shot in the back. A child's body, only four or five years old, was crumpled over her in a manner that suggested he had been trying to rouse his mother when he was shot himself. At a close enough range to leave visible powder burns on what was left of his face.

"Bruder," Ludwig called; his hand landed on Gilbert's shoulder, making him jump slightly.

"... What the hell is this?" Gilbert whispered, his mouth dry.

"It's not important. Come on, they're expecting us," Ludwig replied, sounding entirely calm, disinterested even.

Gilbert turned to stare at him, incredulity too strong in the forefront of his mind for anger to find its way in. "What do you mean _'not important'?_Are you _blind_, West?" He thrust a finger sharply in the direction of the smaller body. "Can't you see that that is a _child?_"

Ludwig glanced down for a moment before looking at his brother seriously. "That is a corpse, mein Bruder, and we need to go." He caught Gilbert's arm and started to pull him away.

Gilbert twisted away and gave Ludwig a strong shove. "They were _Christians!_" he shouted, fury finally taking root in his system as he glared accusingly at Ludwig. "This isn't the way to fight a war! You don't kill the women and children!"

They stared at each other for a minute; Ludwig seemed mildly puzzled, as though he couldn't understand why Gilbert should be upset. "... War is not the same as it used to be, Bruder." Ludwig said at last in a calm tone. "A woman could hold a rifle without much trouble. Besides, there's no loss, they were just Poles."

Gilbert opened and closed his mouth without sound a few times before he managed to speak. "They were _Christians!_"

"They were Slavs. Come on, we need to go now." Ludwig gestured for him to follow. Gilbert stared at him for another moment and then turned away and started walking in another direction. "Where are you going?" Ludwig called after him.

"To find a church. I need to confess." Gilbert snapped, shoving his hands into his pockets and glaring at his surroundings.

"Bruder, we don't have time for this. What do you need to confess for?"

Gilbert stopped and turned back to look at him for a moment before spitting out, "My utter failure at raising a child." He started walking again and Ludwig didn't try to stop him.

...

A/N: So, I guess the way I've been playing Gilbert in these drabbles isn't so much regional (tied to the East Prussia province-thing) because when he was his own kingdom he took up a lot more geography and such; I'm playing him more towards Catholic Germany at the time. The Pope (presumably after being told in some smokey back room that he ought to stop saying bad things about the Nazi Party) maintained a non-interference policy in regards to the whole thing, but a lot of the Catholic population of Germany at the time was mighty unhappy with the state of things. Keep in mind that Catholicism was not the dominant religion and Catholics were somewhat ostracized (though not to the extent that ethnic groups were) under the Reich. So I'm viewing Gilbert as very religiously motivated in a lot of ways and while he can rationalize Gypsies and Jews as being deviant for not accepting Jesus yadda yadda, unnecessary killing of Polish Christians is not jiving with his Crusader upbringing.

I wrote this back in February and forgot to post it to FFnet, sorry about that.


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